Don't know if you guys are interested, but...
I've just got off the phone from an hour-plus teleconference with JPL
about Spirit. Hopefully I'll remember what was said...
They first started having anamolous communication with Spirit yesterday,
during a high-gain transmission to earth (Canberra), but because of
weather problems, they are unsure if the communications problems were
with Spirit or the weather. Yesterday and today (both) they received a
'commanded beep' signal from the rover, which indicates that it is
alive, and processing the command, but it is also in 'safe' mode due to
an unknown fault.
At the time of the problem, the only mechanical activity that was
occurring was the movement of the high-gain antenna (in other words, the
rover was not in motion). As an additional item (I'm adding this as
editorial comment, not something that JPL thinks is related),
high-current spikes were seen in the high gain antenna after first
deployment on the surface, but it was unable to be repeated during
diagnostic tests.
The rover will have an additional team on it at present, which will
create some minor human resource difficulties, because it was going to
be 'powered down' during the landing and egress phases of Opportunity's
arrival.
At the present time, Spirit remains in the 'safe' mode, and will remain
in that mode until commanded to do otherwise. Because the 'anomaly
team' does not know what the problem is, it will be done on a
step-by-step basis, and they will not even tell the rover to resume
communication until they get a better handle on the problem.
The problems are being 'simulated' on test beds at JPL, in order to try
and duplicate the possible problem that the rover might be having. One
question that I asked (and was rather shocked at the answer) was whether
or not the test units are being used in the same temperature/pressure
regimes that the Spirit rover is at, and it turns out that the test beds
are being run at room temperature, room pressure.
While this is a serious problem, I don't have any sense that this is
unresolvable, rather, it will take some careful, dedicated sleuthing to
find out what may be going on, and to find ways to work around it. The
fact that it responded to the command to 'beep' is seen as EXTREMELY
positive, as it means that the command mechanism is still functioning,
as well as the low-gain antenna, etc.
If you guys have any further questions, ask, and if the question was
related during the teleconference, I'll try and answer from memory.
David Erbas-White